Screening the future
Smartphones galore?
Intel in smartphones; Qualcomm in Televisions
OLED and 4k are watchwords when it comes to TV
The auto parade

Here’s a closer look at some of the top themes from the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas

Automakers are trying to figure out how to bring applications to cars in a safe way, and many of them were demonstrating their connected-car technology at the show in spectacular fashion. Audi had a large demonstration of its embedded connected-car system, for example.

Just a few years ago, the automotive section of the show felt like going back in time, said McCracken. The main thing to see was the latest car stereo systems.

This year, it was navigation, voice-controlled apps, Internet radio and a host of other in-vehicle gadgetry.

“The car industry finally sees cars as consumer electronics devices,” he said. “In the old days, if you were a young person, the single coolest thing you could ever own was a car. Today, young people live for the day when they can have their own smartphone. I think car companies understand this. They understand that while yes, safety is paramount, they want to build things that are cool.”

Nokia’s new Lumia 900 smartphone, which runs on Microsoft’s latest Windows Phone operating system, marked the Finnish firm’s re-entry into the top-end U.S. smartphone market. It probably got the most buzz of any smartphone at last week’s show. It will come to AT&T’s 4G LTE network in March. Prices haven’t been released.

Sony also introduced two smartphones, including the Xperia Ion, which is a 4G Android device to run on AT&T’s LTE network. LTE stands for Long Term Evolution, the latest generation of fast wireless networks.

“A common theme from our meetings at CES was new LTE smartphones from leading Android and Windows (phone makers) in an attempt to better compete with iPhone,” said T. Michael Walkley of Canaccord Genuity. “We anticipate a host of new Windows and Android LTE smartphone introductions at Mobile World Congress in late February.”

Mobile World Congress is an international mobile trade show held in Barcelona. The U.S. is the only country to have 4G LTE networks running to date, with both Verizon and AT&T offering the service in portions of the country.

“This is the first year where a meaningful number of people will have LTE devices,” said Harry McCracken, editor of the Technologizer website. “But this is not going to be truly pervasive until Apple dives in.”

Intel and Qualcomm are on a collision course to compete with each other in the computer and smartphone businesses, and each announced interesting deals with Lenovo at the show.

Intel chips will power a Lenovo smartphone. (Intel also announced a partnership with Motorola to develop smartphones.) This is Intel’s first foray into the smartphone processor market, where Qualcomm has 300 devices using its Snapdragon applications processor and 350 more devices being developed for later release.

Meanwhile, a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor is powering a Lenovo Smart TV that will be sold in China. Features include gesture and voice recognition.

Qualcomm thinks Microsoft’s pending upgrade to its Windows operating system — called Windows 8 — will open the door for Snapdragon to get into laptops and other computers. But buzz around Windows 8 was muted at the show, limited to a few demonstrations.

There is no release date yet for Windows 8. McCracken expects it to be out “a little earlier than people expect.” It could be launched as early as late summer.

Windows 8 is a much more significant revamp than other recent Windows updates such as XP, Vista and Windows 7.

“Microsoft is asking people to give up the user interface that they used on Windows for the last 25 years in favor of Metro, which is basically the same user interface as Windows Phone,” McCracken said. “It’s touch-centric, and you will be able to run your old applications, but they will be secondary.”

The changes aim to establish a beachhead for Microsoft in tablets, among other things. But there’s no telling whether it will be successful. McCracken thinks it will take longer for Windows 8 to become popular than Microsoft might hope.

Intel also stressed ultrabooks at the show. The chip giant has trademarked the name and set minimum standards for required features, including thinness, battery life and boot-up time. Ultrabooks were introduced by HP, Acer, Asus, Lenovo, Toshiba and others. Some seemed like knockoffs of Apple’s MacBook Air, McCracken said. But others were different enough that they may catch on with consumers as prices come down from the current range of about $900.

“PCs are so incredibly mature,” he said. “Intel is pouring a lot of money into getting PC manufacturers excited about this. The real question is, will consumers be excited?”

Mike Freeman • u-T

All the big TV makers displayed a cargo-ship load of new products at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week. Many of these devices were Smart TVs that connect to the Internet — a big trend last year as well.

But there also were some interesting technology advancements. Both Samsung and LG showed 55-inch OLED TVs that were remarkably thin — as small as 3/16th of an inch. As one Samsung executive put it, the displays look like they’re floating in air.

OLED is short for Organic Light Emitting Diodes. The technology has been around for a while but is tough to manufacture in large screen sizes. It appears, however, that television makers are getting closer to mastering big-screen OLED TVs.

“Large-panel OLED TVs still need some significant cost (reduction) but will play to the trend of higher color gamut/higher contrast for an overall significant improvement in image quality in TVs going forward,” Baird Equity Research wrote in a note to clients.

Another emerging TV technology is known as 4K. It has extremely high resolution — four times sharper than top-end high-definition sets today. There is not much 4K content available. But Sony makes 4K cameras and projectors for the movie theater market, so more films and TV shows are expected to be shot using the technology.

McCracken said he has spoken to TV industry experts who claim the human eye can’t distinguish between today’s high-definitiion sets and these super-high-resolution TVs.

“I trust them,” he said. “But I also trust my eyes, and the demos looked fantastic. So I think at least today’s HD will start to look lower resolution and you will see this really high resolution. And to me, that looks more like real life than 3-D does.”

Speaking of 3-D, the technology appears to be improving. Several manufacturers demonstrated 3-D sets, including glasses-free models, but mostly in small screen sizes. LG Electronics pulled off a fun stunt when it hung up a long bank of 3-D TVs in front of its booth. It handed out 3-D glasses to attendees and showed a video of Saturn’s rings, with space rocks appearing to come off the screens at onlookers.